As the size and form-factor of consumer equipment (such as handsets, mobile telephones, personal audio players, radios, satellite navigation devices, televisions, home cinema systems, etc) becomes smaller, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the sonic performance at a reasonable level due to the use of small or micro speakers in such equipment, especially as these speakers are often housed into small acoustic enclosures. The resulting loss of acoustic performance often includes one or more of the following:                “Honky” performance due to resonances within the speaker/enclosure combination and poor cabinet damping;        Poor bass response due to use of small speakers, speaker apertures and enclosures;        Inability to reproduce adequate loudness due to use of low battery voltages and small speakers in portable/mobile equipment;        Difficulty in listening to material in noisy environments due to excessive dynamic range;        A reduced stereo image due to pairs of speakers being very close together; and        Speech intelligibility may be lost or severely degraded.        
Tuning such devices can be a long and challenging task, often requiring the skills of a “golden ear” expert. It would be desirable to be able to reduce the time required and the skill level required for such tuning processes.
Moreover, there is often a limitation or restriction on the amount of processing (e.g. the amount of second order filter sections) available for the audio processing. This is particularly true when power consumption by, and size of, processing apparatus are to be kept as low as possible. Hence, it would be desirable to be able to improve the audio quality achievable from such a limited processing capability. It would also be desirable to be able to provide quick and simple means for being able to configure such a limited processing capability to achieve a desired audio processing result whilst adhering to the limitations imposed on the processing resources available.